3M Knew Its Fluorochemicals Were Toxic Decades Ago & Likely To Cause Cancer

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ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of energy. It lately launched a 8,000 phrase exposé on how 3M knew that its PFAS chemical substances have been in folks’s our bodies.

The knowledge within the article is just too necessary to miss, so listed here are its highlights.

In 1997, Jim Johnson gave a 3M Company chemist, Kris Hansen, an uncommon project: Hansen was to check human blood for chemical contamination. With a doctoral dissertation on tiny particles within the environment, she was the fitting selection.

What was responsible for Hansen’s project? A number of of 3M’s most profitable merchandise contained human-made compounds referred to as fluorochemicals. The corporate’s PFOS (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid) had examined optimistic within the our bodies of 3M manufacturing unit employees. Normal inhabitants samples, too, appeared to comprise the blood contaminants.

Have been these outcomes a lab error?

She used a mass spectrometer, which weighs molecules and makes identification attainable. She and her crew devoted a number of weeks analyzing extra blood — each single one was contaminated. She up to date Johnson on her crew’s findings. His response was “cryptic.” With none suggestions from her supervisors, she and her crew ordered recent blood samples from each provider with whom 3M labored.

Every of the samples examined optimistic for PFOS.

Then her boss took early retirement.

Though Hansen had been informed that PFOS wasn’t dangerous in manufacturing unit employees, she needed to make certain. She knew from her research and former discipline analysis that probably the most dependable strategy to gauge the protection of chemical substances is to check them over time, in animals and, if attainable, in people.

What Hansen didn’t know was that 3M had already performed animal research, beginning within the Seventies. The research had proven PFOS to be poisonous, but the outcomes remained secret, even to many on the firm. Rats and monkeys died inside weeks of PFOS publicity.

In 1979, an inside firm report deemed PFOS “certainly more toxic than anticipated” and beneficial long term research. Hansen’s bosses by no means informed her that PFOS was poisonous. In the meantime, one superior intimated that her lab testing tools may be contaminated. After cautious cleansing, the outcomes stayed the identical. 3M purchased three extra and really costly mass spectrometers, and he or she repeated her exams on totally different populations and in numerous venues.

Every pattern contained PFOS. The chemical appeared to be in every single place.

On its web site at this time, 3M describes fluorochemicals.

“3M helped pioneer the science of fluorochemistry more than 60 years ago – and we’re continuing to find new ways to put these amazing materials to work … 3M fluorochemicals are engineered for high purity, performance and sustainability – including our next-generation C4 chemistry, offering a favorable safety and environmental profile for its intended uses.”

These compounds at the moment are thought of “forever chemicals.” In 2023 the US Environmental Safety Company’s (EPA) released the primary tranche of testing knowledge for PFAS in consuming water. They discovered a whole lot of water methods are contaminated with the poisonous “forever chemicals.” About 8% of water methods that serve roughly 14 million folks detected two of the most typical of those chemical substances, PFOA and PFOS, of their consuming water at ranges that exceed EPA’s proposed consuming water limits.

A colleague gave Hansen extra blood samples to check, which have been optimistic for PFOS — but the samples got here from a horse. As an alternative of succumbing to humiliation, Hansen questioned why PFOS was making its manner into animals.

Her reply was unnerving: the chemical had unfold by means of the meals chain and maybe by means of water. Hansen and her crew in the end discovered PFOS in eagles, chickens, rabbits, cows, pigs, and different animals. In addition they discovered 14 extra fluorochemicals in human blood, together with a number of produced by 3M. Some have been current in wastewater from a 3M manufacturing unit.

Hansen discovered no recourse for the best way senior colleagues saved questioning her work. As an alternative, she devised an experiment through which blood with out PFOS may be situated. She was profitable — samples that confirmed no hint of PFOS have been situated in blood that had been collected earlier than 3M created PFOS. “Apparently, fluorochemicals had entered human blood after the company started selling products that contained them,” the ProPublica article explains. “They had leached out of 3M’s sprays, coatings, and factories — and into all of us.”

Hansen met a scientist who revealed to her a paper written in 1981 by 3M scientists. It outlined experiments and confirmed suspicions about 3M origins of PFOS, however 3M attorneys had urged the lab to not reveal their findings.

A presentation Hansen was requested to present to 3M’s CEO, Livio D. DeSimone, “seemed to view her diligence as a betrayal: Her data could be damaging to the company.” The CEO fell asleep within the assembly. Whereas defending herself, she recalled different scientists earlier than her who had been unsuccessful in persuading the higher 3M echelon.

Quickly afterward, Hansen’s job description modified. Solely experiments particularly requested by a supervisor could be permitted. Her new position could be to investigate samples for research that different staff have been conducting — and to take action with out query.

But Hansen’s analysis was not misplaced. The outcomes of her analysis “were quietly making their way into the files of the Environmental Protection Agency.” By 1998, 3M officers admitted that the corporate had measured PFOS in blood samples from across the US — Hansen’s analysis — however didn’t imagine that its merchandise introduced a considerable danger to human well being.

Hansen, in the meantime, was ostracized by her superiors and associates. Over 2 a long time Hansen labored on many new duties at 3M — besides fluorochemicals.

Strain from the EPA pressured 3M to discontinue its total portfolio of PFOS-­associated chemical substances. In 2006, after the EPA accused 3M of violating the Poisonous Substances Management Act, partially by repeatedly ­failing to reveal the harms of fluorochemicals promptly, the corporate agreed to pay a small penalty of $1.5 million, with out admitting wrongdoing.

A swath of 150 sq. miles round 3M’s headquarters was discovered to be polluted with PFAS — native fish and water supplies have been stuffed with it.

In October 2022, after Hansen had been at 3M for 26 years, her job was eradicated, and he or she selected to not apply for a brand new one. She reached out to ProPublica for what could be her first public dialogue of her fluorochemicals analysis. She expressed remorse that revealing what she had identified earlier in her life “would have been too much to bear at the time.” Johnson, Hansen’s former boss, not solely concurred together with her accounts however added multi-layered particulars of his personal makes an attempt to uncover flurochemicals in 3M merchandise and their response in people.

3M has now settled a lawsuit filed by cities and cities with polluted water to the tune of $12.5 billion to filter out PFAS — relying on what number of water methods want the chemical substances eliminated. “The settlement, however, doesn’t approach the scale of the problem,” the ProPublica article concludes. “At least 45% of US tap water is estimated to contain one or more forever chemicals.” The price of removing them all will seemingly attain $100 billion.

An April 2024 Biden-Harris rule will designate the PFAS chemical substances as hazardous substances underneath the Complete Environmental Response, Compensation, and Legal responsibility Act (CERCLA), also called Superfund, and “will help ensure that polluters pay to clean up their contamination.”

The unique story in its entirety is exempt from ProPublica’s Inventive Commons license till July 19.